[188] Emphasizing the importance of relaxation and awareness with Jeffrey Stevens
1:13AM Jan 7, 2025
Speakers:
Evelyn Mckelvie
Jeffrey Stevens
Mary Ann B.
Sharon
Keywords:
meditation practice
new year resolutions
relaxation techniques
awareness meditation
dualistic split
fear and ignorance
mindfulness practice
sensory world
mental world
non-contrived meditation
Dharma teachings
meditation benefits
open eyes
mindfulness and awareness
meditation retreat
Sanjay. Guru Rinpoche,
virtual Mic I
Search Engine, testing, Testing, testing you
Testing, testing, Testing And
good evening, everybody. Can you hear me? Yes, all right, this is a little different, because I guess there's no host, I guess it's just me.
We'll try to figure this out.
So, Happy New Year, everybody. I'm going to unmute you just so that people can say, Hello, Happy New Year, Happy New Year. ML,
New Year, Happy New Year. Happy
New Year. Hello, Happy New Year. Hi, Hello, Happy New Year, everybody,
it's the crew. Good to see everybody again. I think this is the first, well, it would be, wouldn't it, the first Night Club gathering of 2025, I don't know, at least the first meditation one. And I think that there's some kind of a reorganization going on, probably I got an email, but I didn't, I didn't see it, but there's clearly no host here. It's just, is there? No sir, it's me. So that means that people are going to be popping in, and I'm not going to see them, and then I'm going to let them in. I think I'll talk to Andrew about this. This is going to be a little disruptive. Maybe it's just a temporary The
email says Jeffrey will be hosting. I don't know
if anybody else got that email, but, but that, yeah, but that just that must mean hosting, like running the software. That's, uh, okay,
you know, I don't know if you heard Jeffrey, but Alyssa has left. That's, I don't know somebody. No, I did, yeah, I got, but I figured, you know, somebody else would be in our place, yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe that'll happen down the road,
yeah. Probably should, so that I can just focus on this, because I don't sit in front of a desktop like some people do. My screen is, like, way over there, so I might not see, well, look, look, there's more people coming in. Let's see.
Jeffrey, you can delegate host duties.
Anybody wanna? I'll
volunteer if you wish. Okay?
Evelyn, thank you. I'll send you some holiday cookies if I can hang on. So just let everybody in, I guess,
unless they're pointing a gun at me or something, then I won't. Oh,
come on. Don't be afraid of that. Don't be afraid that. Okay, you now the co host, did that work?
Yeah, I guess yes. That's what
we'll do from now on, okay, someone will resume co host, assume co host duties. Otherwise, won't be doing this all night. All right, wow. This is a big year. Don't you guys think it's a big year? And
Jeffrey, recording, yeah, recording,
is it okay? I'm recording from my side. Okay,
I'll
record this the Zoom one too. Thank you for reminding me I never use Zoom recordings, because I always have my other recordings, but it's a good backup. And actually, they probably want them, don't they? This is all new to me. When I do these things, I do it with a team. Anyway, is everything good? Is it recording? Did you guys have to say, yes, we'll allow it to be recorded. No,
no, no, like this is
recording here. All right, looks like Brooke wants to come in. Evelyn, are you gonna let Brooke in or no?
Okay, well, are any of you making new year's resolutions that include some form of renewed meditation practice. Anyone? Someone said no. Someone said, Yes,
I'm just going to keep on, keeping on. That's good.
That's good. Well, this is a very good time at the beginning of a year when it's cold and you're inside and everyone else is deciding that they're going to exercise or they're going to stop watching so much television, to just if you're already a meditation practitioner, it doesn't hurt to decide to yourself that you're going to somehow go back to the basics and clarify what Meditation really is, how to get it going, how to evaluate whether you've gone off on a side track, or whether you're actually practicing properly. Because when you practice properly, you make changes in your life. They happen, and things that are a little confusing at first aren't confusing just through the virtue of practicing well. So I've just been reviewing lots and lots of what's going on in the world of meditation. All of my teachers are coming up with their own like intro programs, and these are great, I mean, they're truly great teachers, but most of them rely on a traditional curriculum that has a lot of assumptions about how much time we have and how much preparation we have and how much patience we have. And the one teacher who really doesn't do any of that you've heard me talk about them a million times is Sonia Rinpoche. Sonia Rinpoche just tells people to start their practice by relaxing. That's it. If you go and you begin practice with him, you get the deepest instructions that any teacher in the world gives, because he's a Dzogchen teacher. But the way he brings you into that is the simplest way that you'll ever see. He just he teaches you how to relax, and by relaxing, you kind of come together as a person. Your fragmented and scattered mind begins to come back to center, and bit by bit, you re consolidate your functions. Your mind becomes clear and your eyes begin to open. You begin to see things that you may have felt but you couldn't really get them in your gaze before, things that are going on in your life that are draining your energy or causing fear or just causing general confusion. Well, you start to see and feel them when you approach practice in a simple but sincere way. So let's just tonight practice that way, and I'll just say that just in case we get cut off, we are hosting a number of things this month that you're all invited to. We have a free Dharma talk coming up on January. What is it? January 14, if you click the link in the comments, we'll send you a link to that. And if you do that, you can also watch the replay of that. Replays this year just to make things. Replays this year are just going to be for people who register for the course, and they'll be up for a little while, and then they'll disappear and make way for the replays of the next one. They'll all be in the Archive in our new members area. And then we also are finally really launching the circle program, April, who runs this with me, for those of you who don't know, a lot of people here have been on our retreats and things, but some of you haven't April's been working, working, working on building. out.
14th, okay,
Evelyn, if you happen to see comments pop up that need a response from me, please just let me know, because I won't be able to see them otherwise. You
So meditation practice could mean a lot of things, but when you get down to the types of traditions that Andrew and I teach and we're trained in, you, wading into a type of practice which takes you beyond your identification with the world of the body and the world of the mind. It doesn't take you out of communication with those dimensions of your experience, but it does help you recover a sense of what you actually are and what you thought you were. So we begin, you could say our default condition is we're strongly identified with the parts of us that move and change. And there are two dimensions of that. There's the sensory world of our body and our sense organs, and then there's the mental world, thoughts, emotions, memories, moods. And of course, within the feeling world, or the body, is the subtle body, these are all aspects that arise and dissolve every moment. They are produced by karmic causes and conditions, and they are witnessed or experienced by awareness. But awareness is in no way limited by them. Awareness is not identified with them, but what is identified with them, our mind. Our mind becomes confused and it chases after something that moves, and it begins to identify itself as the perceiver of the mind and body. I call this amnesia. It begins to have amnesia. So meditation practice in these deeper traditions is helping us understand what we are by seeing that we are not what we thought we are not what we thought we were. And the characteristic of not knowing what we are is that our attention goes up when the world goes up and it goes down. When the world goes down, it moves with the things that move. So we can forget what we are in just a moment by being pulled in a new direction. We can also just forget what we were thinking about when something new happens. I mean, that's not that important. We could be thinking about dinner, but then there's a loud noise, and we turn to face it, and within seconds, we forgot that we were thinking about dinner. I mean, that's a mundane example, but a more important example is that by following the things that move, we never understand what we really are. We are the abiding nature that sort of supports the appearance of everything else. Meditation systems that come from that perspective minimize the manipulation of the mind. There are benefits to the manipulation of the mind, such as directing attention to the flow of the breath, there's there's a reason to do that, but you're doing that for the sake of something that you'll do later, which is let go of All manipulation that's called machipa, or non contrived meditation. The deeper traditions, and this is what I was referring to as Sonia Rinpoche a few minutes ago. Will start us off with that. First of all, drop everything and do not follow after the mind or body. Don't correct it. Don't try to do anything. Just relax and settle into a basic state of being. And they will encourage that for some period of time. They might encourage that. I've told a number of you that long time ago, I went to Sony Rinpoche, and I'd been doing just all kinds of complicated practice, you know, all the Vajrayana stuff, visualization practice, and all that stuff. And I was having a great time. I mean, I really liked doing it. I had been studying a lot. My life was full of that. But I'd started to get really tight, really, really tight. And I talked to a number of great teachers, you know, a lot of teachers of the same caliber as Sonia Rinpoche, and they would help me sort of tweak my practice one way or another. But I went to him, and I just had a meeting with him. And he'd never met me before, although he'd, I'd ask him questions during talks, and he would kind of sort of look at me, and I couldn't tell if he was listening to my questions or if he was just kind of scanning me like a dolphin white. And when I had this meeting with him, he listened to me, and he asked me what practice I was doing. So I told him. He said, Okay, how long have you been doing that? And I told him, you know, 10 years. 15 years, whatever it was. And right when I expected for him to say, Okay, your next practice should be this. I mean, it's really what they all do, he said, You've done enough of that. No more of that type of practice. None. I just want you to relax into awareness for a year. Don't do anything else, okay? And so surprised, but considering it was coming from someone I trusted, I thought, Well, okay, and he said, and then in a year, we'll talk again, he said, so just do that. Just take care of yourself and relax in awareness. And I had been with him for two weeks on this retreat, and right away, it's like the most direct instruction I've gotten from anyone in a very long time, because it was not the same instruction he would have given the next person who talked to him. It was like that was very much on a case by case basis, or at least it seemed that way. And at that point, I think I'd been meditating, you know, sincerely, for 20 years, or something like that. And now I wasn't doing any of that stuff. I was just every day. I was just relaxing. And he gave me very few instructions just that. And it absolutely changed my life. It fundamentally rewired me as a practitioner. And every year since then, when I go back, he he really notices, and he'll say things like, Whoa, yeah, something's really happening that's good. You know, you're very good, very good. And I don't think I was headed in a good direction, but I was doing all of the meditation instructions that people in our culture struggle for so many years just to get access to all of the Vajrayana stuff and all of that. And I was doing it, and I think I was, you know, doing it by the book, but it what it it was having an effect, a good effect, but it wasn't like what happened just by simplifying and relaxing. So after that point, I really started to wonder if maybe we come to meditation from a situation that needs to reset itself fundamentally, and then when we are reset, we can begin to build so since then, I have definitely taken up those old practices, again, the ones, ones he's given me, and everything is different. Now, practice has meaning and power it. I thought it did before, but that year of total relaxation and simplicity. It was it was transformative, and now everything kind of has more meaning and more life to it, and it's just gotten me thinking that we're all so busy doing things and trying to improve and trying to figure our lives out. Meditation doesn't really involve doing that, though, and the awakening that happens within meditation happens on its own when we put the right conditions in place. And those conditions need to include relaxing with what is arising. And part of that is not identifying with it, letting it happen. If the mind goes this way, we let the mind go that way. We don't go with the mind. We keep a steady gaze. In Dzogchen traditions, they differentiate between the gaze of a dog and the gaze of a lion. If a dog is looking at you and it's growling and it's maybe going to attack, if you can pick up a stick and wave the stick, the dog will start looking at the stick, and then you can throw the stick that way, and the dog will chase the stick. But if you're facing a lion,
you pick up a stick and you start waving the stick. The lion isn't looking at the stick. The lion is looking at you. So it said that the gaze of the meditator is the gaze of the lion. We don't chase the stick. We stay as we are. We see things as they're happening. So let's do some practice. I'll guide it a little bit. But I think that starting out the new year with the simplest state of being is going to be the best thing, at least for me, it is. So I invite you to join me with that. My Gong is just a little out of reach, so let's all pretend that I'm hitting the gong. I'll act like I'm hitting the gong, and then you can hear it in your in your mind's ear.
There it was.
So I encourage
an upright seated meditation that is fully relaxed and open eyed
we're going to relax everything we are, so we might as well give everything we are a role in this relaxation. So sense is open, back upright, begin By just relaxing and
there are two aspects of life that appear when we just relax. There's the sensory world and the mental world
and nothing else and
when we're relaxed, we don't go after them,
they come to us
that's different than how we usually are.
So if you find yourself following after something or scanning your body. Nothing wrong with that, but see if you can relax even that. No doing at all you
relax into the part of you that doesn't move,
that doesn't change,
that may Sound abstract, and as an idea, it is abstract, But when we relax, That's where we Go. You
This is an easy type of meditation to do because it has so few instructions. There's no way to do it wrong. You can just do it or not do it. Not doing it means that you're following something. Something has stirred interest, and the mind has followed it. And when the mind moves, it forgets its own awareness and it solidifies as a sense of self, then it's me thinking this. It happens so quickly, and it's been happening our entire life. But as soon as we have established some ground of relaxation, we'll begin to see the difference. We'll see the sense of self rise up ready to chase something. It will pull up like a getaway car, and the door will already be open, but we just won't get in it. That getaway car is just something that is appearing to awareness. No action needed. I
We know that we're in our mind when we're noticing things. Noticing things is an activity of the mind. Our attention is moved by our discrimination.
We see, we identify,
we apply labels, even if they're very subtle and quiet, we are still conceptualizing everything, and all of that is movement. Movement. Isn't bad, but it's the product of a dualistic mistake. We've taken identity as an observer, and now we're in the action of observing something else. That's the seed of some sorrow, of confusion and ignorance. The mind is always hunting. It's always looking out for itself. It could be afraid, it could be aggressive, whatever it is, it's always in opposition to something else, even if it's peaceful. The problem is that it's inaccurate. That's the problem. It's a relationship based on an error of perception and assumption, and the quickest way to relieve ourselves of that error is not to reason through it. We can do that. Of course, the Dharma teachings will help us, but that's a slow process. It's to relax right in the face of appearances. We relax into the part of us that doesn't hunt, that doesn't seek, that doesn't conceptualize.
Then experience comes to us. We don't go to it. But we don't need what comes to us. We just allow it be with it. We can be friendly, but we don't have to be needy or afraid. We
when we keep our eyes open in meditation, even though this is difficult for some people, because they've learned to close their eyes, which is, of course, perfectly valid, but when we keep our eyes open, we can really learn to let appearances come to us. We relax the eyes. We relax them all the way back to the back of the eyeball, whatever it is, and light comes in and these shapes and forms and colors are what we have learned to label. The eyes are step one, and the mind is step two, and ignorance is step three when we're relaxed, the eyes just receive and awareness is just like A screen upon which light is reflected or projected you
like the screen in a theater. It doesn't care what is projected on it. It's okay. It accommodates anything. Nor does it move toward the projection. The projection comes to it. It is free from the story within the projection. It just is what it is.
It doesn't change and
the screen within The theater also doesn't block the appearances that are projected onto it.
It doesn't move away.
And one of the important points of awareness meditation is that appearances that move thoughts and sensations are in no way an obstacle. There's no goal of getting rid of them, and we're relaxed, so we're not doing anything to change the way they flow or what they say. Sometimes we may have periods of thought that surprise us. They may be very emotional, may be very conflicted. They may seem to be the types of things that we would never think, but there they are. We are not blocking them. We are letting them unfold, and it doesn't matter the screen is not stained by what is projected upon it.
This awareness isn't a better place for us to be. It just is what we are. That's the key point of these teachings. We may not want to rest in awareness. These teachings are just saying, okay, yeah, but the cost of that is in authenticity. You are awareness, you have identified as something else, and it's causing confusion, and it's also promoting confusion in others You
when we relax, We don't promote confusion and
because awareness
can be fully present even when we're doing something such As rolling out pizza dough or vacuuming or driving,
it would just make sense that
we can maintain awareness even while we are following the breath. It's not one or the other, although it's often presented that way. But if we can practice just being while we are making tea, which seems to be the favorite example of all the Buddhist books, why can't we practice just being while we are developing mindfulness through directed attention.
So if we're already doing mindfulness practice, infusing it with the relaxation of awareness may give it new life, and mindfulness practice is such a good thing, but it can become tight and small, and that's The critique that the awareness practitioners have about it, not that it's a bad thing, it's a good thing, but it can be done in a way that loses the vastness of what it is supposed To be going toward. It can become small minded. You
so let's just totally relax, drop everything and then in that open space, see if we can stay with the cycle of breathing. We don't go after it, we let it come in, but we allow mindfulness to find the contour of the breath and stay with it, maintain awareness and allow mindfulness To strengthen itself. So start With just letting Go And
one of the Words that Western meditation teachers love to use is nowness. But nowness can mean so many things, and within the awareness traditions, nowness has a specific meaning can be really helpful in our practice. Nowness is the point where awareness meets the momentary arising of the body and the senses and the mind. It's the meeting point. It's an experience rather than a practice. The practice of nowness is the practice of being. Nowness is a simple, genuine state of reality that is accessible by relaxing and remaining uncomplicated, it confirms itself. It is always here, and it can become the basis of a practice. It is the most prevalent form of meditation that uses this is called Mahamudra, and it has very philosophical terminology for all of this, which tends to complicate things. But I it is the discovery of nowness and then the practice of that which is being. And this leads to discovery and
so let's pretend that I'm hitting the gong again, and let's wind down our practice. Thank you, Evelyn for holding the gates. And if there are any comments or any discussion that anyone wants to have, I'm here for it. Jeffrey,
yes, one comment came in earlier that there is no link for people for the Dharma talk in here.
So what
is that? Right?
That's correct. I
see it.
You see it? Yeah, it's right there on the comment. It's the third thing down. Well, not for free, Dharma talk, January 14, is it not there?
I don't see it, and back there you can
No,
okay, yeah, I think there's some administrative thing that worked
between you and Alyssa.
Oh, look at that. Okay, I'm sending this to everyone, which is what I did before. Let's see. Did it show up?
There it is. Yeah, great.
And there, there is another
question,
yeah, of course, when doing this meditation of resting and awareness, can we let the eyes go blurry when they completely
relax? Yeah,
that's a good question. I'm not finished and still okay and still maintain hyper attention on the awareness. I have found it difficult to relax the body fully when my eye muscles are tightened and trying to maintain complete focus on an object or environment, awareness is completely clear and invisible. Correct
the bill, okay, I'm gonna have to just look at this here. So okay, when doing this meditation, pressing and awareness, first of all is the questioner, Pat, Patrick, are you here? Patrick?
Ah, good. Patrick, do you How would you feel about asking the question this way?
No, Mike, okay, well, that's going to be your answer on let's see. Okay, first of all, when you're relaxed, you'll go through a stage where your eyes feel like, what are you doing, man, I we, come on, come on. And you're relaxing them, and they won't know what to do. And this is a little bit of a important point. It's like a rite of passage many people, but not everyone. I'm one of the many, though maybe you are too. We are so visual that if we don't have something to focus on, our mind goes dark and it begins to wander in visually imagined things. What would be better is that the eyes go blurry and awareness opens that blurriness of the eyes, it's going to be different for everyone. But if you're a dedicated practitioner and you do this regularly, give it two months, then what happens is your eyes become clear, and still they open, and it's like you're looking into a mirror, and that becomes an important support for the stability and depth of the practice as it goes forward. The eyes are important, although they're not so important that they become the main instruction, but there really is some marvelous support that relaxed open eyes give when we're practicing awareness. Now, this other thing you asked hyper attention on the awareness. You do not want hyper attention on the awareness, not even attention on the awareness. So you do not want to maintain hyper attention of anything in this practice. So that would kill the practice right away. So we're not paying attention. First of all, first of all, when we talk about awareness, we're talking about the dimension of knowingness, which has no physical or mental expression. Attention is a function of the mind, the part of us that thinks and attention cannot see awareness, just like I can't grab space. I can grab something in space, but I can't grab space itself. Attention can pay itself to something else that's in awareness, like a thought or an emotion, or it can look through the sense organs, and it can pay attention to physical objects or sounds or smells, but it can't see awareness the mind cannot see awareness, and that's why awareness meditation isn't something we can figure out on our own. We have to use a set of instructions, instructions that are presented by 2000 years of people who actually can do it, and they're very helpful in that way, difficult to relax the body fully when my eye muscles are tightened and trying to maintain a complete focus. Why get that? Of course, you know, if you're like, let's just say that I'm I'm using the traditional meditation object of a can of club soda. It's been going on for 1000s of years in India, it's one of the great ones. The real challenge in meditation is that we are able to now. Now we're talking about directing attention, which is mindfulness practice, awareness practice. It's a different type of practice altogether. It does not involve directing attention. Now, toward the end of our meditation session here, I talked about how you could combine the two, but maybe I shouldn't have done that. That might have been confusing. Awareness practice does not direct anything. It just is. It's very powerful, but it's also subtle. Mindfulness practice is where we direct attention to an object, and this is the key we want to learn to find the minimum effective effort for just directing enough attention to touch and hold the mind that we don't want to grip it anymore. Now look what I've done, and that's what too much tightness does to our meditation. So I don't know what I'm going to do now. I'm so dehydrated already, but let's see, awareness is completely clear and invisible. Yes, the billions of tiny pixels of color are from the physical eyes and mind, not the clear light of awareness. Yes or no, if I mean you're speaking my language here, Patrick, the pixelation that we experience when we begin to relax it, if you had to locate it in our experience at the most fundamental level, it's an expression of awareness, but so is my hand, and so are your thoughts. So I don't know if that helps us. So let's go one step down the pixelation of visual phenomena. And some of you might be like, what? But you know, you keep practicing, you'll experience this is similar to the sound of silence that some but not all, probably not even most people just hear all the time when their mind stabilizes. Those two are kind of the same thing. One of them is appearing to the eye consciousness, but it isn't seeing externally reflected light. It's seeing itself. It's seeing its own impermanent nature. Same thing with the ear consciousness, so it's at the level of the subtle body, but if you can relax and see the millions of colorful pixels with your eyes open, that is enough. That is a very good way to have enough of something to stabilize with, without actually directing the eyes to see something. So I don't know if that was, I mean, just come to one of our retreats if you want to learn more about this. Because, you know, that's kind of a main instruction that we that we do. Hey, Mary Ann, you don't see it. Oh, you don't see I thought, yeah, nice to see you, by the way. Mary, Mary, New Year. There it is. Oh yeah, same thing. No. Mike, what? Oh yeah. See, this is why I shouldn't be doing this at the same time. Okay, all right, any other questions, anyone want to ask a question or make a demand or raise a challenge or say something
inspiring
that was a very inspiring Dharma Talk and meditation. Thank you. Well, thank you. Evelyn,
Could you could you say something more about fear being mistaken in duality and ignorance?
Sure. Hi, Sharon, I don't think I've ever met you before. Hi, hi, yeah, so that is like shorthand for a number of you know things which you probably know that. So let's start at our fundamental wisdom level, which we have, even if we don't know it. That's the assumption that in that a meditator has when they step foot onto the path on one of these traditions, that fundamentally, the wisdom that we seek isn't something that we'll find somewhere else. It's here, the quickest way for those who can do it is always said to be to simply recognize it. And if you can't just recognize it, there's maybe something that you could do that helps you there. So you can still use the quick instruction, although it's not just like that, because for almost no one is it just like that, and that is the process of learn, learning to relax. Now, what are we relaxing? Because this isn't just like, oh, relax and feel my body. Oh, I feel so much better. I mean, that will come, that'll just be a part of it. But that's not the point. What we're relaxing is the dualistic split that's happened that has darkened awareness and catapulted us in to the time bound expression of self and other that is characterized that experience of, oh, I'm here. I am a self. And there's other that is fundamentally characterized by, okay, first of all, the general word that the Buddha used was suffering Dukkha. That's a fundamental never going to be anything other than basic dukkha, because it's a misperception, and it causes us to continually try to understand it. So there's anxiety there, but the awareness teachings, you know, they'll still talk about suffering, but to them, it's it's easier to convey what that is by describing it as fear. We are contracted up, and we're in this dualistic experience of me and everything else that would be like the screen in a movie theater, advancing into the movie itself and trying to tell all the actors to get off my front lawn, you know, or that kind of thing. There'd be some confusion there. The screen doesn't need to be concerned with what is projected onto it. Actually, what is projected onto it in no way changes the screen at all. It's just a temporary display. Awareness is like that, and we are fundamentally awareness. We don't have to become awareness. We are awareness, but we have become confused. Awareness is capacity to know itself has to be reignited. And the way that we do that, we human beings, do that, or the most efficient way, is to learn a system of meditation which brings us into awareness and then stimulates it to recognize. And that's what you know. This is sometimes what is called RE enlightenment, or awakening or recognition of the nature of mind. It's something that we relax to, and what we are relaxing away from is this dualistic split that dualistic split is set in motion and maintained by fear. Fear causes us always to run away from one thing and try to take shelter in something else, or run away from this and try to grab something else. It just keeps that split split, and there will always be a lack of authenticity. I mean, that's that actually sounds more like a authenticity, in this case, meaning real authenticity we're living in, in in a in a misperception of reality, and that's in these teachings called collectively samsara, the cycle that repeats itself and which never on its own, comes to an end. Samsara is the dualistic, fear based experience that perpetuates itself and never ends, never however, that's not to say that it can't end, it won't end, but the path of instructions that lead away from that bring it to an end, and that Is that path is called Dharma, dharma in nightclub, as far as I know. I mean, I know Andrew Buddha Dharma. So the the Dharma teachings that lead to awakening and were put in motion 2424 2468 years ago, I think is what I calculated the other day by Siddhartha Gautama, anyway, I don't know that I just make things better or worse. Better good, thank goodness, because if I made things worse, I need to, as April always tells me, that's my wife. Get give a good talk, or you're gonna have to work at Best Buy. So I don't, I don't want, I don't want to leave home. We have our studios set up here. I just thank you. I'll tell her that, and then I get another month. It's month by month in our house. I'm kidding. I'm just making a joke. Here.
Um anyone else? Thank you, Jeffrey, yeah,
there you are. Hang on. I have
something in front of you. Yeah, I always enjoy your your talk. Thank you so much for your guided meditations. Oh, you're welcome. I love your analogies, and I love your guiding us with an awareness practice. It always brings a freshness to my own
practice. That's
good to know, yeah, yeah. And what? What came up for me this evening was really beautiful, when you were talking about the classic cup of tea. You know, whatever it is,
tea, cutting carrots.
What's that? Uh, oh, there was a
that's okay. I can hear you now.
I Okay, oh, it says my internet is unstable, so sorry if I'm cutting out. But you know, whether it's a cup of tea or a headache, like whatever, whatever I meet with awareness that meeting
that becomes Buddha,
the cup of tea, yeah, headache comes, becomes Bucha.
Yeah, that's good. That's really important, you know, because if we think the Buddha means no headache, then we do a an imaginary practice that doesn't have any pain, but that's not brave. We're not going to wake up from this world with all of its suffering by riding some pleasure pony into a fantasy of peace. But you know that?
No, yeah,
thank you. Yeah, thank you. How's your back? Are you
feeling? Okay?
It's extremely painful, and it's Buddha, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks for thanks for asking.
I'm grateful. Yeah,
it's good to see you. Yeah, you know. And that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that it's not hard and that it's not scary. I get I get scared sometimes. So I appreciated what the last person asked about fear, because that comes up for me sometimes too. It's not all, it's
not all so rosy. You know, honestly,
I would really like it if I would just like to have a conversation with practitioners about the prevalence of fear right now in the world. I don't want to turn a Dharma talk into that, if people don't want that, but good Lord, if we, if practitioners can't talk directly about that, it just seems like, what are we ignoring it? But now is a very good time to understand how Dharma relates to fear and uncertainty, because this is a time where, if you can bring Dharma into your life right now, you can bring it into anything. And I know that my teachers, well, the older ones, most of those actually, they're all they've all passed now. They witnessed some of the most horrific stuff in Asian history, with the rise of Mao Zedong and the genocide in Tibet. They were there. They experienced it, and by the time I met them, there was not a trace of
anger in them.
If they can experience that and end up being the incredibly truth telling, gentle human beings that I met, I can, I can live in this world
with my new Evely. I think that would be very tight. I think, I think that would be very timely, because I, you know, I find, I found myself in fear in the middle of the night, last night, and, you know, there's division that says, Oh my God, if I'm fearful, then I'm not being spiritual right now. Like, somehow I
let myself down. Course, of course. Yeah,
yeah. Like, like, fear is and spiritual, is it? Yes, I think it'd be great if you could bring a talk into that. That'd be or a retreat, that
would be great. I'll probably bring it up during the Dharma talk, although I don't know it probably should be. We're gonna, you know, we'll have an impromptu conversation. Anyone here wants to come to in our circle platform. That's why we want to get it up and running. That's why we, you know, we have this 30 day we're just gonna try it. We're just gonna invite everybody in, and then we'll have some stuff, but we can actually talk about things like that, because we need to. And if somebody doesn't want that, and they tune in, and that's what they're talking about, then people are like, what the hell I don't want this. So we have to have a special opportunity. But I really think that understanding fear when it's available to us is that's what the path has become. That's what the path has become. If you're sick, then sickness is the path, not getting away from sickness. It's not wrong to try and get away from sickness, but if that's what you got. That's the path. The path is opening to the karma that is presenting itself, not complaining about it, because if you're going to complain about pain and suffering, it's not going to go away. That's some sorrow. That's what karma is. And dharma teaches you to be brave, courageous, and then awaken or having a bad dream, it's not so easy to shake it off, especially if we want to get rid of it rather than see it to be a dream.
Yeah, and there's so much fear right now, it's hard for me to discern how much is personal and how much is just collected that through,
yeah, if we could do a survey of all of the practitioners, I would love to know how many of them are experiencing a sense of doom in The middle of the night. I mean, come on. It may not even be that you are afraid, but you know that the people near you are you talk to people and they don't know what, what's going on. They can't figure it out. Someone told me the other day, they don't even know what. Oh, this is a practitioner. This is one of my long, long standing friends. He's he's had teaching some more people than I have. He's getting a PhD right now in Indo, Tibetan Buddhism, and something happened in the news, and he said, the thing about this is, is I really don't know what's real anymore, meaning the media, like, I don't know if this is real or if this is some thing. And I just started to think, oh my god, yeah,
if he's thinking that,
and he's a practitioner and a scholar,
what are just
people thinking, you know, who don't think about this stuff? Because a lot of people just don't. They're used to a steady supply of diversion and entertainment they want the bread and circuses, and
there aren't any right now.
Or there is actually because squid game is coming back, so we can all take refuge in that. I'm kidding. All right, don't watch squid game, just do another session of meditation. All right, I'm sorry. Anything else anyone wants to say Do
All right.
Well, I will take that as a conclusion. Thank you all for joining and Evelyn, thank you so much for being the host. I look forward to seeing you all at the Dharma talk, which is next week, I believe, and at the retreat. If you're coming to the retreat, this is going to be a good one. There's going to be a very good time to do this retreat. So if you're looking for a way to engage in wholesome practice that relaxes you, come to the retreat. We'd love to see you there. All right, everybody. I can
I can smell dinner.
It's funny, because when I'm teaching here, talking about Dharma here, April is meeting with other Dharma practitioners from another group. And so this is her Dharma night coincides, and then she finishes early and makes the world famous tuna melts, which, even though she's trying not to eat any carbs, she's doing it for me, so I have to be there in a timely manner. All right, y'all be strong. Keep practicing. Relax with fear, relax with pleasure, to relax with whatever arises, and you'll land on the path. And let's all keep practicing together the New Year. Good night. Thank you. I know Dennis's voice when I hear it. Goodbye. Happy New Year. See y'all soon.